Pixel Worlds – PC Review – Minecraft This Is Not

In Pixel Worlds players can create their own worlds with building blocks and different items that range from furniture to clothing items. Players also build platform levels for others to play, marketplaces for trading the ingame items and info worlds to help new players, among other things. Privately held mobile games developer, Kukouri Mobile Entertainment developed this game for high end mobile devices like Apple iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, but for this review I played through Steam.

Oh look, more annoying people…yay.

Gameplay

I had very little expectations going into Pixel Worlds. I knew basically nothing about it other than it was something like Minecraft, which I have played and enjoy for some relaxing building, but boy was this nothing like Minecraft! The first faux pas for me was that you had to choose a gender which was fine, but it had a character in blue for male and a character in pink for female. I really thought in this day and age of video gaming that we had started to overcome stereotyping in this fashion, especially when the eyes of young adults/kids firmly set on the development of this world.

Moving on from Kukouri’s lack of open mindedness, I find myself on a platform where I had to dig and break some boxes to get gems and seeds. Being a gamer for many years I like to think I have a good working knowledge of how things work, but when faced with the seeds I collected, I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do next or if I was supposed to plant them where I stood? Fed up with wondering what the heck was going on, I managed to find a button where you could go to “Different Worlds”. Great I thought, this will probably be interesting now. Again, how wrong I could be.

Heigh-Ho Heigh-Ho its off to ( not minecraft ) work we go

Other people create worlds you can visit. It is the players who run the economy. You can trade blocks and items with other characters and you decide the price. I was greeted with an over-crowded mess of characters jumping around, hitting objects to the point of nearly making my ears bleed and wanting to sell me stuff I didn’t even know I needed. The developers have put a lot of effort into building up a strong community with leader boards featuring the best worlds, dedicated Twitch streams and YouTube content, and a friend management system. With that said, the actual gameplay leaves something to be desired. If you’ve played Growtopia, you know exactly what you’re getting into. You terraform your little world by punching blocks which will occasionally yield gems (premium currency) and seeds.

The tutorial essentially tells you how to punch things before leaving you to your own devices. Folks comfortable with these survival sandbox games will do fine, but the lack of a real tutorial will leave others feeling quite lost.

Graphics

Pixel worlds is a vibrant and pretty game, even with its flaws, it does stand out among other games in its category. You see plenty of characters running around wearing bright and cheerful costumes. Other than that, there is very little visual stimulation that will keep you wanting to explore this world.

Do you think I came to the party under dressed?

Sound

As stated earlier in my article, I was greeted with people running around hitting things that made the most annoying sound ever! Imagine visiting grandma’s with a toddler and grandma had a lot of ornaments that made a lot of noise, now imagine that toddler eating far too much sugar and being let lose to fiddle with grandma’s ornaments….that’s Pixel Worlds on the sound category.

Longevity

You can practice downloading and uninstalling with this game, since it’s so small, but if you’re looking for something to do otherwise, I wouldn’t play this game again. It was bad enough playing it for the length of time I did. I really don’t enjoy bashing games as I know how hard developers work, but sometimes you come across a game that you just did not mesh well with and this is definitely one of those for me. That being said, I can see the appeal and the need for a game like this….if you are a toddler that’s had too many pick ‘n’ mix.

For this “riding on the back of minecraft” game, it unfortunately gets a Thumb Culture thumbs down from me and scores a pick ‘n’ mix Trash Award